Defenders: Brutal plan for Northern Rockies wolves

[large thumbnail url=”defenders-brutal-plan-for-northern-rockies-wolves” filename=”news” year=”2010″ month=”08″ day=”25″] [thumbnail icon url=”defenders-brutal-plan-for-northern-rockies-wolves” filename=”news” year=”2010″ month=”08″ day=”25″] The Defenders of Wildlife is highlighting the USDA’s Wildlife Services’ plans to wipe out hundreds of wolves in the upper Rocky Mountains. The Endangered Species Act ruling doesn’t protect wolves from the organization originally responsible for exterminating all the wolves in the region in the 1940s.

The court decision to restore Endangered Species Act protections for Greater Yellowstone wolves is only weeks old. But that’s not stopping Wildlife Services agents — the government’s wildlife killing experts — from planning to kill hundreds of wolves in the region, including helpless pups in their dens.

The federal Wildlife Services agency has gone too far — and we need your help to stop them.

The federal Wildlife Services agency (a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) is the primary wolf-killer in the United States. Now they want to expand their wolf-killing operations. They plan to work with Idaho officials to kill up to 80 percent of the wolves in north-central Idaho by land and from the air.

Their plan also includes killing entire packs — including gassing helpless wolf pups in their dens — and surgically sterilizing alpha wolf pairs.

All this despite the fact that wolves in the region are once again protected by federal law.

USDA’s Wildlife Services is the same agency that helped kill off wolves by the 1940s. And their new plan shows their intent to escalate their current war on these magnificent animals that you and I have fought so hard to protect.

Instead of helping ranchers co-exist with wolves and other native wildlife with proven non-lethal techniques, Wildlife Services is expanding their role as the nation’s top wolf-killers — and dragging wolf management back to the brutal and archaic practices of the past.

Wildlife Services’ outrageous wolf-killing plan seeks to punish wolves for doing what they do naturally: preying on elk and fulfilling their ecological role as part of a natural system.

This unacceptable wolf-killing plan cannot be allowed to go forward — especially since wolves in Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies regained protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Idaho officials are claiming that wolves are the major cause of elk declines in parts of the state. But in 23 of the 29 elk management zones, populations of these animals are at or above population targets — many of the areas experiencing declines in elk numbers contain no wolves. And the Clearwater National Forest was experiencing steep declines in elk numbers by 1988 — long before wolves returned to the area.

Politics is clearly driving state officials to call on USDA’s Wildlife Services to kill more wolves to artificially boost game populations beyond what current habitat can support.